gardens

May 24, 2015

Not far from our cabin a man is growing his dream, a rhododendron nursery. I have heard of the place for some years, but it was only last year we found it and visited.

Five days a week he has his ordinary job. Every Saturday morning he is selling flowers in the market place of the village. All other hours, when he is not sleeping or eating, he is taking care of his flowers.

Rhododendrons, hundreds, may be thousands of them. And annuals.

Last spring we visited his rhododendron garden.Today we have been to the nursery, out on a small island.

To grow a dream.Not all people do that.

People who do live enriched, enchanted lives.

I am still an apprentice in this art, but after 57 years I am on my way to become a master........I hope.

May 01, 2015

Cabin life weekend. On our way out here we stopped to visit Jorun (she comments here as granny), her kitchen and her garden.

Jorun´s garden has been an inspiration for my own gardening for many years. A place made with green fingers, ccreativity, charm and a lot of fun. Jorun lives on a dairy farm, and she and her daughter in law have painted their wheelbarrow, hoping that this will prevent their husbands, the farmers to steal their barrow whan they can´t find their own. So far it has worked......almost.

A cold April in Mid-Norway, and our gardens looks far from what I met in England a week ago. But dreams and plants are growing, and will soon bloom.

While we sat inside Jorun´s huge, warm kitchen, eating her tomato soup, among the best I have even eaten, it was snowing outside. Luckily it melted fast, and Jorun could take us on a garden walk.

April 20, 2015

This winter & spring I have been reading a book about pioneer British gardeners, The Brother Gardeners by Andrea Wulf. Actually it is a little strange that I started this book in the first place, as it is female gardeners who are my passion, but somehow I came over it, it looked interesting, and there I was.......hooked.

I read book with a pen or a pencil in my right hand, and on page 100 in The Brother Gardenes it came handy..........since Philip Miller acted as consultant to the Duke of Bedford about his estate at Woburn in Bedfordshire..........hi, Bedford and Bedfordshire, that´s where "my" abbey is, isn´t it? I checked google maps on my ipad, and right, quite close to Turvey it was.

I have a blog reader (and a fellow blogger) who lives close to Turvey, and now I sent her a message; Lindsay, are you in for a garden visit?

Lindsay was in, and on Saturday, on my last day at Turvey Abbey, just after breakfast, she picked me up with her Peugeot and her GPS. Woburn Abbey and Gardens our destination.

Before reaching the gardens we had to drive though a deer park, and we were lucky, a huge hoard of the deers was out. And we were lucky once more, as we arrived in the garden just before the tourist buses started to come.

Which meant that for a long time we had the gardens almost all alone.

Woburn Abbey is huge, and so are the garden. And very well maintained. As we are in the middle of April it is still spring. I guess the gardens will be marvellous in a month or two. But even now I loved them!

Unfortunately the maze was closed,

so we had to enjoy it from outside the fence only.

But there were enough other things to see and enjoy.

The Camelia House, which I posted about the other day, the peek highlight :-)

When people ask me why I love England and Great Britain so much, I know exactly what to answer:

April 15, 2015

As many of you know, I am working on a book. A book which might never been published, it might even never been finished. But the writing gives me a lot of fun. At one time the main character in the books goes to London to work as a gardener in The Royal Parks, or may be she does........as the book is in progress, everything might change of course.

Terje and I spent yesterday morning in Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Having coffee at The Lido Cafe, lunch at The Kensington Palace Orangery, and when I saw this female gardener working in The Sunken Garden, I couldn´t stop myself taking a series of photos.

Looks like Terje was more interested in photographing me though...........

August 15, 2014

We took over the cabin at Easter 2000 (my parents had built it in 1976) and one of the first things I started to do was to make a garden. Very slowly in the beginning, a tiny little bed with a tiny little rose.

Already the first year I met the challenge.....how could I take care of a garden when we were away for weeks at a time during the hottest, dryest periods of the year.

Over the hears the garden has grown, a little piece of new land cultivated every year.

The cabin garden is simple, consisting of roses and herbs, and also one cherry tree, one plum tree and one red currant. A few strawberry plants, a forsythia shrub and a few perennials.

This year has been extra challenging for the garden. We´ve been away for weeks, and it did not rain for weeks.

All the roses have survived, but their flowers are tiny and few.

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We are spending a few days at the cabin, and yesterday I spent a couple of hours weeding, watering, adding fertilizer, talking with the plants. And one thing I know for sure - as long as I am fit enough to weed, my cabin rose garden will survive!

August 07, 2014

I have been up to "my" little red house again today. More photos, a peek in through the only window without shutters, more photos....a lot more photos. The house is not for sale, but my dream is for free and will stay with me.

28 years ago Johhny came to Lofoten from Sweden. Just like me he fell in love with the place, and a year later he had bought his dream. Today, many years later, Johhny is married to my best friend´s brother, we are facebook friends and instagram followers, and through internet I feel I take part in a tiny little bit of Johnny´s dream.

Johnny and Trygve live in Southern Sweden, but spend every summer in Lofoten. When Terje and I came here last summer it was still early summer and Johnny and Trygve had not arrived. We climbed the gate to their home and felt like intruders to the amazing perennial garden, took a million photos and later I sent an email asking if I could use some of the photos in a blog post. Johnny said yes then, and yes again today when we came to visit. This time by an invitation, knowing that both men would be there to greet us.

This year Johnny and Trygve arrived from Sweden early in the summer, and have since then been digging, weeding, planting and cultivating their garden.

We were taken on a garden tour, among the 300+ different perennials.To manage a garden like this, north of the arctic circle, staying here only during the short summer.....I can´t imagine how they do it.

After a long walk Trygve said: "I hope you are hungry. We have coffee, pancakes and cloudberries waiting for all of us inside"

Hot pancakes, Swedish coffee and cloudberry jam! Of course we were hungry. Trygve and Johnny had made a huge pile of pancakes, but between the four of us we managed to eat them all :-)

On Sunday Johnny and Trygve will have an "Open Garden" with people coming from far and close to enjoy their parennials. We have traveled south by then, but were lucky enough to have our very special garden walk alone with these two creative, charming guys!

August 05, 2014

Cultivating a garden far up north, far out in the North Atlantic is a challenge. Terje and I went out for a morning walk, and I decided to look for gardens. Most houses had lawns, some of them quite huge. Most houses had trees and/or shrubs. But very few had a perennial garden.

A couple of weeks ago I got the summer magazine from the national Norwegian garden company, Hageselskapet, in the mail.There I read a very interesting article about gardening at Røst, about its challenges and about how daylight 24/7 during summer compensates for the short season.

We had beautiful weather during our two day´s stay. Gardening looked like an easy job. But I know there must be chains of days here with mist, cold, howling wind. Days when you have to hold on to every post and stone you find to walk a few steps, days when the icy cold wind fills every fibre of your body, making you believe a world without wind doesn´t excist.

As we walked along I started to dream about finding an abandon house, move in for a summer, and start a garden.

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Come back in a few days and may be I have a post about a couple who did just that!

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Britt-Arnhild´s House in the Woods has been on the internet since 2005. The blog is my virual diary and a tribute to life and life´s Creator. I love to hear from my readers, in comments and in emails, and from time to time I am lucky to meet some of you, here, there everywhere.I also have a few other blogs, you find them in the right hand bar. Welcome over, and welcome back here.

July 31, 2014

After a couple of days at home to unpack and pack again, and visit the St.Olav Festival, we are on the road again. This time together with my parents. Goal and adventures will be revealed in the blog as we go.

Our first stop was my special surprise for my prents, a coffee and fresh pastry stop at Høie garden and atelier, if you read my blog you remember the place from a few weeks ago. My parents had never been there, neither did they know that theplace, which is situated a couple of hours north of Norway, excisted.

During my last visit at Høie I scooped up a million idea and brought them back to my own garden. This time I scooped up a million more.

Any my mother took as many photos as I did......almost.

We had sun while we were in the garden. An hour later we drove right into a heavy thunder and hail storm.

July 18, 2014

It is vacation time, and for a month now Terje and I will be on the road, here, there, everywhere in Norway. We left Trondheim yesterday morning and spent ALL day on the road, the first stop up in the mountains where I wanted to strech my feet with a visit in Kongsvoll Alpine Garden.

An alpine garden, high up in the mountains, open only two months a year, the other months the are is often covered in snow.

This summer has been hot and dry, and many of the flowers were already finished. Other were in fuul bloom.

I didn´t have much time, we still had a long way to go, but the short walk I managed was refreshing, and my camera was busy.

From the pamflet I found at the entrance to the garden I read:Kongsvoll Alpine Garden was designed in 1992 by Simen Bretten, who was then in charge of Kongsvoll Biological Station. It replaced an alpine garden that a botanist named Thekla Resvoll created beside the railway station in 1924.....

Another woman I would love to know more about.

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Later in the day we had lunch at a little homestead north of Hamar, Lilleberg.

June 30, 2014

Friends of us have bought a summer appartment at Inderøy, a penninsula in the Trondheimsfjorden, a couple of hours to drive from us. They are spending their summer vacation there and invited us to come for a visit. Yesterday we had no other plans, and decided to spend the day with Inger and Roger.

Let us know if there are anything special you want to see during the day, Inger texted me a few days ago. I never got around to reply to her message, and I am glad I didn´t, for Inger and Roger had made plans for us. Great plans.

Like taking us to a garden filled with plants, flowers, glass, metal and a lush of creativity.

As we walked around, my eyes got bigger and bigger.....

.....and bigger and bigger.......

.....and bigger and bigger.

In the end I had to pinch my arm.

My camera was busy. There were so many things I wanted to remember. Ideas I wanted to bring home to The Blue Garden, or just keep in my heart for rainy days.

Today, after work and dinner I eagerly started to do a few whimsical changes in my own garden.

No big changes, but the small touches,here, there, everywhere.

The artist behind the garden at Inderøya has a webpage which you can find here. Some of the garden photos here are a bit out of date though, but you can also follow her on facebook here.

PS - the difficult part of writing this post has been to limit the photos. I want to show them all, or even better, I want to take you to this very special garden :-)

Britt-Arnhild Wigum Lindland

COPYRIGHT 2005-2019

All texts and photos by Britt-Arnhild Wigum Lindland

About me

About me

I am living in a red house surrounded by a blue garden near Trondheim, Norway. I love everydays and post about my steps through life. Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods is open to everybody. Welcome over!